Control dramas keep us locked in behaviours that no longer serve us. When we are children our parents want to keep us safe and nurture us but often take things too far because of the experiences they had and haven’t healed.
When we become young adults they still want us to be their babies and when we are over the age of 18 they often fail to realise that we are more than capable of making our own decisions and still treat us like small children.
One of the most poignant times in my life was when my daughter Alice told me that she needed me to allow her to make her own mistakes as that was the only way that she was going to learn. She opened my eyes to the fact that not only was I trying to rescue her but in my endeavour to rescue her, it felt to her as if I was trying to control her. She was 15 at the time and we have come a long way since then. Indeed we ( my son Gareth and daughter Alice) as a family have a very close relationship and I feel very blessed to experience such loving relationships between us all.
We, like most families have had our ups and downs and have had to learn from them, and certainly I have done things differently to the way my parents did because I didn’t want my children to feel the way that I did. I haven’t always got it right and we have had different dramas to those I experienced with my parents and brothers, but they have all led to considerable growth on many levels for all of us.
People say that you can’t choose your family but you can choose your friends but what if you chose your family because it is those relationships that need most healing? What if you have agreed to help to heal the whole ancestral line in some way? Working on yourself to heal family relationships is key!
What I have come to realise over the years is that you cannot change anyone else, you can only change yourself and that change needs to come from a willingness to go within and acknowledge and then heal the issues that family members are reflecting back to you. This can of course be extended out to all people that cross your path as they will have connected with you for a reason.
One of the hardest things to do, as I am sure many of you will agree, is to let go of your children and allow them to step into their own power, especially as a mother ( I can’t comment as a father in this life! ) as it is your natural instinct to want to protect and nurture them. Alice’s comments all those years ago stuck with me and I have learned to allow her and Gareth to make their own choices, knowing that I am here, loving them, no matter where their choices lead them. By doing this I have empowered them to make their own way in life without any attachment to the outcome coming from me.
When I was in my late thirties I experienced a difficult time with my relationship with my parents. I always loved them but we often didn’t see eye to eye and I would feel like a naughty small child and so would react by having a tantrum whenever I felt that I was being told off, and because i had a tantrum, my parents would then tell me off, so I would have a tantrum and so we went on in a circle for quite a long period of time!
It was only when I stepped onto my healing path, stepped back and looked with new eyes that I realised that I was perpetuating the Parent – Child relationship with my parents by my behaviour and that if I wanted that relationship to change, then I had to do something about it. Once I recognised the issues and healed them, I was then able to connect with my parents as the adult that I was and it changed the whole dynamic of our relationship so that they recognised that I was an adult with my own beliefs, choices and path.
Creating an adult-adult relationship with my parents brought our relationship back to a place of love and respect for the people that each of us was instead of the constant battles of ego that had been going on. It empowered us to be our authentic selves instead of taking power away and so affecting self-confidence and self-worth.
Many people say that the first seven years of life are the most crucial and certainly this is a time in our lives when patterns and programmes ( belief systems) are put into us, but what many people don’t realise is that below the surface of what we see in the physical world are hundreds of thousands of experiences that we have had in human form over thousands of lifetimes which may be triggered and affect the way that we react to others and live out our lives.
Healing on a deep level is therefore crucial if we really want to make changes in our lives and move forward to a more heart centred way of being.
When we open our hearts and let go of all attachment by being forgiving we empower ourselves and others to be authentic once more. When we work from the heart with love and compassion we recognise that each of us is learning, each of us needs to heal and each of us has a valuable contribution to make to the world.
Love is so important for all of us to experience and give but it needs to be love without any kind of attachment, unconditional love. For when we love unconditionally we empower those around us and feel empowered to be ourselves. We find the confidence within to be and do what makes our heart sing and it is by doing this that we can all help to make this world a much happier, more peaceful place to live in.
Each of us needs to find the love within first if we are going to help the planet to come back to a place of love once more.
If you would like to explore your own family relationships more and help to heal them as well as Find the Love within you please come and join us on the finding the love within workshop on November 11th 2018.
